21: Teenaged

                                    

                                          
"I'm going to kill you!" I screeched, running after Peter. He had asked where my paintings were and I told him they were in the basement, in the dark damp hauntedness where they belonged. Ugly pieces of work they were, they deserved basement treatment, where they could harm no eyes. I didn't want him seeing them out of both embarrassment and saving his eyes from the torment of their awfulness, but he had already taken off running. "There are ghosts down there, you don't want to do that!" 
                          
     "Are you afraid of ghosts, Venus?" Peter mock-taunted, leaning against the door to the basement as I caught up to him. "You are, I see you are, admit it." 
                          
    "You are deflating my pride!" I poked him in the chest and tried to drag him from the door. He wouldn't budge. He smiled his lopsided grin and pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek in the most awful of ways. Since I figured I had feelings for him, it had become much harder to not give into that smile of his. I groaned, pulling on his wrists the best I could so that I'd stop him and stop thinking about him. "Peter! Come away from the door, I'm serious, it's awful down there!" 
                          
     "Does your ghost have a name?" He asked. I gave up. 
                          
     "No. If we give her a name she might think she's welcome upstairs and will haunt us." I replied. "Not that I'm afraid of her, just that haunting can get annoying and I really don't want you haunted by her and my paintings."
                          
   "They cannot be that bad!" He argued, still chuckling. I ran my hand through my hair and shook my head. With eyes wide, he was sure to understand that they were, in fact, that bad. Really, really bad. "And your ghost is a woman?"
                          
      "She is a divine feminine entity, mother says. She has a knack for understanding ghosts and spirits. The downstairs ghost will smite you with her ghostly, feminine fist if a man enters her presence. She might even get mad at me for letting you down there, so how about we just... don't go down there?"
                          
          "Women love me, come on." He jiggled the doorknob teasingly. I scrunched my nose at his words, cringing away from him. He didn't know... right? "Don't do that, don't scrunch your nose at me like that." He smiled a little and tried to mock it, but failed.  
                          
       "I don't like people seeing them. They're so so so bad compared to my mother's and they're hidden for a reason." I folded my arms and slipped between Peter's arms so that I stood underneath his arms and he wouldn't be able to open the door. Accidentally compromising, once again. 
                          
      "So unfortunate you're slow," Peter nudged me in the side and in a matter of milliseconds I was across the room from the basement door, which was now open. All that I could now hear was loud laughter. Oh no.  
                          
          "Peter, no!" I groaned, rushing across the room and down the wooden steps to the basement. It was dark down here, nothing like Peter's furnished basement room. In fact, the only light down here was the light that poured in through the door. "It's dark."  
                          
           "Yeah I know," Peter walked right into me and I fell back onto the bottom step. "Did I body-check you? I feel like I did and when I reached to help I only got the air."
                          
       "Yep," I sighed, laughing to myself. I wasn't hurt or anything. I stood up, carefully. The door at the top of the stairs shut itself. I bet Peter thought the ghostly fables were fake. I felt him turn to face the door, which meant he was facing me. "The chain for the light is hanging from the ceiling, I have never been able to fucking reach it without mother, so you're going to have to grab it."  
                          
          There was a click and the lights turned on. It revealed him looking not so puzzled anymore and sadly, my paintings. Some leaned against the walls, some were piled up. His jaw opened and I covered my face, wanting very much to be able to hide in the dark again. I sat right back down on the wooden steps.